Kittens That Can Explode!

Exploding Kittens: One of the best card games out there, in my opinion. A simple, short, and easy-to-learn game that contains a lot of fun and fights. For me, this is a must-have for everyone who enjoys chilling and having a good time with their friends or family during the evening weekend when it’s raining heavily outside.

The creators, Elan Lee and Matthew Inman, really put out some thoughts on its mechanics, and it works so well. The designs are so funny, especially the NSFW version.

How do I play?

The base variant can be played by up to 5 players.

Each player will start with 5 cards in hand.

Everyone will take a turn, and on each turn, you have the option to play your cards, no matter how many (unless the cards say otherwise).

Then, end your turn by drawing the top card from the center deck.

The next player will continue the turn the same way.

How to win?

The catch is that inside the center deck there are some Exploding Kitten cards that can make you lose the game when drawing them.

The number of those dangerous bomb cards is based on how many players there are in the game, minus 1. For example, if there are 5 players, there will be 4 Exploding Kitten bombs in the center deck.

To win the game, you must be the last person standing without getting killed by the cute time bomb.

Interesting feature

The power cards there are interesting enough to make the game feel lively and give you the option to strategize your enemy’s downfall.

But another feature of this game is that if you draw an Exploding Kitten card, you won’t be killed if you’re able to play a Defuse Card and defuse the bomb for someone else to draw.

Yes, after you defuse it, you are required to put it back in the center deck so that other people, or maybe you, can draw it later in the future.

The best part is that you can even count the cards if there’s a specific person you want to target by counting their turn. But please don’t attack your mom like that if you’re playing with your family. Attack your grandma instead.

Exploding Kittens also collaborates with Netflix; for all Netflix users, you can download the Exploding Kitten game app through Netflix and play the game for free with friends! That’s legitness.

Thoughts

The replay-ability level of this game is high. 10-15 minutes of gameplay and very new-comer friendly.

The base box is small enough for me to carry it if we have hangouts session, but it is definitely not pocket-sized.

Aware of fakes

There’s a lot of sellers selling fake Exploding Kitten brand card games and to be honest it is not a huge issue; assuming you really don’t want to support the creators. The fakes are easy to get with a very cheap price around almost 10 times cheaper then the original.

The downside of buying fakes, the sizing of the cards are different from each factory they produced.

Meaning if you purchase the base Exploding Kitten, and purchase another fake Exploding Kitten expansion pack to combine it together, most likely you can differentiate which card is from which pack and having a card time shuffling the cards as the the smaller cards keeps gliding of when you hold them.

The printing and coating for the fake ones are also pretty bad and easily damaged. I would recommend for owners to buy protective sheets for each card to preserve it regardless you own the fake or original ones.